What Materials Engineering Graduates Earn

Median earnings at 1, 4, and 5 years (College Scorecard)

Start with the shape of the table: Materials Engineering pays $76,070 at the first measured horizon and $94,983 at the last, and those two medians rest on 980 and 1,086 graduates counted respectively. The headline figures weight each reporting program by its graduates counted, so the 400-graduate program moves the national number more than the 12-graduate one; the unweighted column beside it shows the middle program, plain and simple.

From $76,070 in the first year to $94,983 in the fifth, earnings grow 25% ($18,913). For scale, the median bachelor's field in the Scorecard file grows from $45,010 to $65,763 over the same span, so this field's early-career slope is gentler than typical.

By Pell status, the year-one medians for Materials Engineering are $74,957 (received Pell) and $80,897 (did not), $5,940 apart. The split is a reminder that a field median averages over very different starting points; the institution a student picks inside the field moves their personal figure more than the field label does.

Inside its own CIP family, Materials Engineering ranks 12 of 17 published bachelor's fields by five-year earnings; the family median at that horizon is $97,669. Its closest sibling is Mechanical Engineering at $95,975, above this field's $94,983. Family comparisons strip out the broad field effect and leave the specific program choice exposed.

Ranked across all 182 published fields, Materials Engineering stands number 25 by five-year earnings and number 14 by first-year earnings, and number 81 from the lowest median debt. Those three ranks together are the field's fingerprint: high earn rank with a low debt rank is the combination students are actually shopping for, and this field's spread between them is 56 places.

The debt side of the same degree

What does the median Materials Engineering graduate owe? $20,376, the graduate-weighted median over 17 programs with published debt figures. The ratio that matters is debt to first-year earnings: 27%, or 3.2 months of gross pay at the $76,070 median. At the 2026-27 undergraduate loan rate of 6.52%, the standard decade of repayment is $232 a month with $7,413 of interest on top. Model a different balance in the student loan payoff calculator before you borrow it, and sanity-check the degree in the college major ROI calculator.

Where graduates of this field earn the most

Where a student studies inside this field matters at least as much as the field itself. These five programs post the strongest five-year medians in Materials Engineering among programs with at least 30 graduates in the count, led by University of Connecticut at $104,982, against a national field median of $94,983.

A program median describes that program's own graduates in that program's own labor market; University of Connecticut at $104,982 is evidence about a place and a mix of students, not a wage offer. Put the same programs' prices next to these figures with the degree cost calculator and the net price estimator before ranking anything.

Two more facts about the shape of this field: the five highest-paying programs in the table account for only 16.6% of the 1,086 graduates counted at five years, so the top of the table is a thin slice and not the field's center; and the leading program's five-year median of $104,982 sits 11% above the national field median of $94,983. Its graduates' debt figure is not published, one of the gaps this page leaves visible rather than filling.